10 Movies That Should Have Started 5 Minutes Later
9. Wonder Woman 1984
One of the chief complaints about Wonder Woman 1984 - of which there are many - has been its excessive 151-minute runtime, with Patty Jenkins seemingly given carte blanche to make exactly the movie she wanted to after the first film's success.
But the danger signs are there from the jump, as the film's agonisingly distended prologue sequence drags on for eleven stamina-sapping minutes.
The scene features a young Diana (Lilly Aspell) taking part in an athletic contest in Themyscira against other, older Amazons, with Diana attempting to win by taking a shortcut, only to be admonished by her aunt Antiope (Robin Wright) for taking the easy way out.
The sequence immediately becomes less of a slog if we ditch the cornball monologue and preambles, opening instead right in the middle of the event with Diana being pursued by other Amazons for reasons unknown.
It would make the scene more mysterious and suspenseful, and ensure that we get to the point long before audiences started feeling fed up.
Apparently Warner Bros. initially wanted Jenkins to cut either this scene or the following mall scene entirely, but she refused. Sadly, this is a rare case where the studio was basically right.